1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to method and apparatus for generating aesthetically alterable character designs for use in the printing industry, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for changing character shapes to accommodate the degree of alteration desired. The alteration can take the form of condensed characters, expanded characters, and any other desired design accommodation.
1. Description of the Prior Art
In the printing industry and typography field, graphic designs, including character designs, can be produced electronically through the use of computers. With the advent of the personal computer, the desktop publishing industry is growing rapidly, utilizing technology available in various kinds of printers, including laser printers, thermal printers, ink jet printers, LED shutters, and the other types of high resolution printer. Historically, typefaces are created with a set of common design characterics, and a font is a set of all characters within a particular typeface. A type font contains all alphanumerics, punctuation marks, special characters, and the like contained in one version of the typeface.
The optical characteristics of typography are important to keep in mind, since optical illusions are often caused by the proximity of various letter shapes and the letter shapes themselves. For example, optical alignment of characters appears correct to the reader, whereas mechanical alignment of the characters may appear awkward and unsightly. Smiilar optical considerations are important in the character shapes themselves.
Typefaces communicates various feelings to the reader, e.g., elegance, tradition, personality, likability, ect. Also, typefaces are suitable for various specific purposes, such as footnotes, headlines, small print, figures, tables, emphasis, etc., the suitably determined by the character shape.
In the printing industry, and especially in the sign making industry, which uses typograhy, it is often required that characters, typically alphanumeric characters such as letters or numbers, be printed with certain height and width constraints. There is often a need to either compress or expand the length of the display, which requires the characters to be either condensed or expanded, while maintaining as fixed the overall character height. In the past, this has been accomplished by optical means using lenses, or digitally by using electronic computers.
In conventional computer horizontal compression of font characters, there is usually a simple linear rescaling along the horizontal axis of the print line. This process reduces the width of the vertical strokes in the various characters, but leaves the horizontal strokes unchanged in thickness. In expanded characters, this process increase the width of vertical strokes, but again leaves horizontal strokes unchanged in thickness. The character height is not changed. The result is unslightly and aesthetically incorrect and thus distorts the overall impression of the character shape to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the specific character and the degree of compression or expansion involved. Though flawed, this is the conventionally used method of altering character widths since it is relatively fast, easy to accomplish by computer, and there is no artistry involved. To date there has been no other practical method or apparatus that allows the character shape to be automatically altered (e.g., condensed, expanded, changed "X" height) with no loss of artistic and aesthetic quality. Again, this is important because of the role of character shape in conveying the appropriate message to the reader.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for use in the printing and desktop publishing industry for allowing character design shapes to be altered with the aid of a computer while maintaining artistic quality, referred to hereafter as aesthetic alteration.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a process and system for generating an aesthetically alterable character design which redesigns itself for the particular degree of compression or expansion to which the character design is being subjected.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a process and system for generating aesthetically alterable character designs which accommondate a given font to make sure that horizontal and vertical stroke weights remain relatively constant despite compression or expansion.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a process and system which allows design accommodations, such as increasing x height as a function of compression or expansion, to be implemented while retaining the aesthetic quality of the character being altered.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a process and system which is relatively simple, fast, and effective to use, and which is also reliable.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and system which allows expanded and/or condensed characters to be generated, while maintaining a constant overall character height, which contain a weight, curve, and overall appearance of each character and which remain as close to the desired design appearance as humanly possible.
Further objects of the present invention will become apparent in the full description of the invention taken in conjuction with the drawings set forth below.